Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime, 1808 oil-on-canvas by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon

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Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority (via mechanisms such as legal systems) can ultimately prescribe a conviction. Crimes may also result in cautions, rehabilitation or be unenforced. Individual human societies may each define crime and crimes differently, in different localities (state, local, international), at different time stages of the so-called "crime", from planning, disclosure, supposedly intended, supposedly prepared, incomplete, complete or future proclaimed after the "crime".^{[citation needed]}

While every crime violates the law, not every violation of the law counts as a crime; for example: breaches of contract and of other civil law may rank as "offences" or as "infractions". Modern societies generally regard crimes as offences against the public or the state, as distinguished from torts (wrongs against private parties that can give rise to a civil cause of action).

Overview[link]

When informal relationships and sanctions prove insufficient to establish and maintain a desired social order, a government or a state may impose more formalized or stricter systems of social control. With institutional and legal machinery at their disposal, agents of the State can compel populations to conform to codes and can opt to punish or attempt to reform those who do not conform.

Authorities employ various mechanisms to regulate (encouraging or discouraging) certain behaviors in general. Governing or administering agencies may for example codify rules into laws, police citizens and visitors to ensure that they comply with those laws, and implement other policies and practices that legislators or administrators have prescribed with the aim of discouraging or preventing crime. In addition, authorities provide remedies and sanctions, and collectively these constitute a criminal justice system. Legal sanctions vary widely in their severity, they may include (for example) incarceration of temporary character aimed at reforming the convict. Some jurisdictions have penal codes written to inflict permanent harsh punishments: legal mutilation, capital punishment or life without parole.

Usually a natural person perpetrates a crime, but legal persons may also commit crimes. Conversely, at least under U.S. Law, nonpersons such as animals cannot commit crimes.^[1]

The sociologist Richard Quinney has written about the relationship between society and crime. When Quinney states "crime is a social phenomenon" he envisages both how individuals conceive crime and how populations perceive it, based on societal norms.^[2]

Etymology[link]

The word crime is derived from the latin root cernō, meaning "I decide, I give judgment". Originally the Latin word crīmen meant "charge" or "cry of distress."^[3] The Ancient Greek word krima (κρίμα), from which the Latin cognate derives, typically referred to an intellectual mistake or an offense against the community, rather than a private or moral wrong.^[4]

In 13th century English crime meant "sinfulness", according to etymonline.com. The glossing was probably brought to England as Old French crimne (12th century form of Modern French crime), from Latin crimen (in the genitive case: criminis). In Latin, crimen could have signified any one of the following: "charge, indictment, accusation; crime, fault, offense".

The word may derive from the Latin cernere - "to decide, to sift" (see crisis, mapped on Kairos and Kronos^{[disambiguation needed ]}). But Ernest Klein (citing Karl Brugmann) rejects this and suggests *cri-men, which originally would have meant "cry of distress". Thomas G. Tucker suggests a root in "cry" words and refers to English plaint, plaintiff, and so on. The meaning "offense punishable by law" dates from the late 14th century. The Latin word is glossed in Old English by facen, also "deceit, fraud, treachery, [cf. fake]. Crime wave first attested in 1893 in American English.

Definition[link]

England and Wales[link]

Whether a given act or omission constitutes a crime does not depend on the nature of that act or omission. It depends on the nature of the legal consequences that may follow it.^[5] An act or omission is a crime if it is capable of being followed by what are called criminal proceedings.^[6]

History

The following definition of "crime" was provided by the Prevention of Crimes Act 1871, and applied^[7] for the purposes of section 10 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1908:

The expression "crime" means, in England and Ireland, any felony or the offence of uttering false or counterfeit coin, or of possessing counterfeit gold or silver coin, or the offence of obtaining goods or money by false pretences, or the offence of conspiracy to defraud, or any misdemeanour under the fifty-eighth section of the Larceny Act, 1861.

Scotland[link]

For the purpose of section 243 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, a crime means an offence punishable on indictment, or an offence punishable on summary conviction, and for the commission of which the offender is liable under the statute making the offence punishable to be imprisoned either absolutely or at the discretion of the court as an alternative for some other punishment.^[8]

Sociology[link]

A normative definition views crime as deviant behavior that violates prevailing norms – cultural standards prescribing how humans ought to behave normally. This approach considers the complex realities surrounding the concept of crime and seeks to understand how changing social, political, psychological, and economic conditions may affect changing definitions of crime and the form of the legal, law-enforcement, and penal responses made by society.

These structural realities remain fluid and often contentious. For example: as cultures change and the political environment shifts, societies may criminalise or decriminalise certain behaviours, which directly affects the statistical crime rates, influence the allocation of resources for the enforcement of laws, and (re-)influence the general public opinion.

Similarly, changes in the collection and/or calculation of data on crime may affect the public perceptions of the extent of any given "crime problem". All such adjustments to crime statistics, allied with the experience of people in their everyday lives, shape attitudes on the extent to which the State should use law or social engineering to enforce or encourage any particular social norm. Behaviour can be controlled and influenced^{[by whom?]} in many ways without having to resort to the criminal justice system.

Indeed, in those cases where no clear consensus exists on a given norm, the drafting of criminal law by the group in power to prohibit the behaviour of another group may seem to some observers an improper limitation of the second group's freedom, and the ordinary members of society have less respect for the law or laws in general — whether the authorities actually enforce the disputed law or not.

Other definitions[link]

Legislatures can pass laws (called mala prohibita) that define crimes against social norms. These laws vary from time to time and from place to place: note variations in gambling laws, for example, and the prohibition or encouragement of duelling in history. Other crimes, called mala in se, count as outlawed in almost all societies, (murder, theft and rape, for example).

English criminal law and the related criminal law of Commonwealth countries can define offences that the courts alone have developed over the years, without any actual legislation: common law offences. The courts used the concept of malum in se to develop various common law offences.^[9]

Criminalization[link]

One can view criminalization as a procedure deployed by society as a pre-emptive, harm-reduction device, using the threat of punishment as a deterrent to anyone proposing to engage in the behavior causing harm. The State becomes involved because governing entities can become convinced that the costs of not criminalizing (through allowing the harms to continue unabated) outweigh the costs of criminalizing it (restricting individual liberty, for example, to minimize harm to others).

Criminalization may provide future harm-reduction at least to the outside population, assuming those shamed or incarcerated or otherwise restrained for committing crimes start out more prone to criminal behaviour. Likewise, one might assume^{[original research?]} that criminalize acts that in themselves do not harm other people ("victimless crimes") may prevent subsequent harmful acts (assuming that people "prone" to commit these acts may tend to commit harmful actions in general). Some^[who?] see the criminalization of "victimless crimes" as a pretext for imposing personal, religious or moral convictions on otherwise productive citizens or taxpayers.

Some commentators^[who?] may^{[original research?]} see criminalization as a way to make potential criminals pay or suffer for their prospective crimes. In this case, criminalization becomes a way to set the price that one must pay to society for certain actions considered detrimental to society as a whole. An extreme view might see criminalization as State-sanctioned revenge.

States control the process of criminalization because:

• Even if victims recognize their own role as victims, they may not have the resources to investigate and seek legal redress for the injuries suffered: the enforcers formally appointed by the State often have better access to expertise and resources.
• The victims may only want compensation for the injuries suffered, while remaining indifferent to a possible desire for deterrence.^[10]
• Fear of retaliation may deter victims or witnesses of crimes from taking any action. Even in policed societies, fear may inhibit from reporting incidents or from co-operating in a trial.
• Victims, on their own, may lack the economies of scale that could allow them to administer a penal system, let alone to collect any fines levied by a court.^[11] Garoupa & Klerman (2002) warn that a rent-seeking government has as its primary motivation to maximize revenue and so, if offenders have sufficient wealth, a rent-seeking government will act more aggressively than a social-welfare-maximizing government in enforcing laws against minor crimes (usually with a fixed penalty such as parking and routine traffic violations), but more laxly in enforcing laws against major crimes.
• As a result of the crime, victims may die or become incapacitated.

Labelling theory[link]

See The "criminal"

The label of "crime" and the accompanying social stigma normally confine their scope to those activities seen as injurious to the general population or to the State, including some that cause serious loss or damage to individuals. Those who apply the labels of "crime" or "criminal" intend to assert the hegemony of a dominant population, or to reflect a consensus of condemnation for the identified behavior and to justify any punishments prescribed by the State (in the event that standard processing tries and convicts an accused person of a crime).

Natural-law theory[link]

Justifying the State's use of force to coerce compliance with its laws has proven a consistent theoretical problem. One of the earliest justifications involved the theory of natural law. This posits that the nature of the world or of human beings underlies the standards of morality or constructs them. Thomas Aquinas wrote in the 13th century: "the rule and measure of human acts is the reason, which is the first principle of human acts" (Aquinas, ST I-II, Q.90, A.I). He regarded people as by nature rational beings, concluding that it becomes morally appropriate that they should behave in a way that conforms to their rational nature. Thus, to be valid, any law must conform to natural law and coercing people to conform to that law is morally acceptable. In the 1760s William Blackstone (1979: 41) described the thesis:

"This law of nature, being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original."

But John Austin (1790–1859), an early positivist, applied utilitarianism in accepting the calculating nature of human beings and the existence of an objective morality. He denied that the legal validity of a norm depends on whether its content conforms to morality. Thus in Austinian terms a moral code can objectively determine what people ought to do, the law can embody whatever norms the legislature decrees to achieve social utility, but every individual remains free to choose what to do. Similarly, Hart (1961) saw the law as an aspect of sovereignty, with lawmakers able to adopt any law as a means to a moral end.

Thus the necessary and sufficient conditions for the truth of a proposition of law simply involved internal logic and consistency, and that the state's agents used state power with responsibility. Ronald Dworkin (2005) rejects Hart's theory and proposes that all individuals should expect the equal respect and concern of those who govern them as a fundamental political right. He offers a theory of compliance overlaid by a theory of deference (the citizen's duty to obey the law) and a theory of enforcement, which identifies the legitimate goals of enforcement and punishment. Legislation must conform to a theory of legitimacy, which describes the circumstances under which a particular person or group is entitled to make law, and a theory of legislative justice, which describes the law they are entitled or obliged to make.

Indeed, despite everything, the majority^{[citation needed]} of natural-law theorists have accepted the idea of enforcing the prevailing morality as a primary function of the law. This view entails the problem that it makes any moral criticism of the law impossible: if conformity with natural law forms a necessary condition for legal validity, all valid law must, by definition, count as morally just. Thus, on this line of reasoning, the legal validity of a norm necessarily entails its moral justice.^{[clarification needed]}

One can solve this problem by granting some degree of moral relativism and accepting that norms may evolve over time and, therefore, one can criticize the continued enforcement of old laws in the light of the current norms. People may find such law acceptable, but the use of State power to coerce citizens to comply with that law lacks moral justification. More recent conceptions of the theory characterise crime as the violation of individual rights.

Since society considers so many rights as natural (hence the term "right") rather than man-made, what constitutes a crime also counts as natural, in contrast to laws (seen as man-made). Adam Smith illustrates this view, saying that a smuggler would be an excellent citizen, "...had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so."

Natural-law theory therefore distinguishes between "criminality" (which derives from human nature) and "illegality" (which originates with the interests of those in power). Lawyers sometimes express the two concepts with the phrases malum in se and malum prohibitum respectively. They regard a "crime malum in se" as inherently criminal; whereas a "crime malum prohibitum" (the argument goes) counts as criminal only because the law has decreed it so.

This view leads to a seeming paradox: one can perform an illegal act without committing a crime, while a criminal act could be perfectly legal. Many Enlightenment thinkers (such as Adam Smith and the American Founding Fathers) subscribed to this view to some extent, and it remains influential among so-called classical liberals^{[citation needed]} and libertarians^{[citation needed]}.

History[link]

Some religious communities regard sin as a crime; some may even highlight the crime of sin very early in legendary or mythological accounts of origins — note the tale of Adam and Eve and the theory of original sin. What one group considers a crime may cause or ignite war or conflict. However, the earliest known civilizations had codes of law, containing both civil and penal rules mixed together, though not always in recorded form.

The Sumerians produced the earliest surviving written codes.^[12] Urukagina (reigned c .2380 BC–2360 BC, short chronology) had an early code that has not survived; a later king, Ur-Nammu, left the earliest extant written law-system, the Code of Ur-Nammu (c .2100-2050 BC), which prescribed a formal system of penalties for specific cases in 57 articles. The Sumerians later issued other codes, including the "code of Lipit-Ishtar". This code, from the 20th century BCE, contains some fifty articles, and scholars have reconstructed it by comparing several sources.

The Sumerian was deeply conscious of his personal rights and resented any encroachment on them, whether by his King, his superior, or his equal. No wonder that the Sumerians were the first to compile laws and law codes.

— Kramer^[13]

Successive legal codes in Babylon, including the code of Hammurabi (c. 1790 BC), reflected Mesopotamian society's belief that law derived from the will of the gods (see Babylonian law).^[14] Many states at this time functioned as theocracies, with codes of conduct largely religious in origin or reference.

Sir Henry Maine (1861) studied the ancient codes available in his day, and failed to find any criminal law in the "modern" sense of the word. While modern systems distinguish between offences against the "State" or "Community", and offences against the "Individual", the so-called penal law of ancient communities did not deal with "crimes" (Latin: crimina), but with "wrongs" (Latin: delicta). Thus the Hellenic laws^[15] treated all forms of theft, assault, rape, and murder as private wrongs, and left action for enforcement up to the victims or their survivors. The earliest systems seem to have lacked formal courts.

The Romans systematized law and applied their system across the Roman Empire. Again, the initial rules of Roman Law regarded assaults as a matter of private compensation. The most significant Roman Law concept involved dominion.^[16] The pater familias owned all the family and its property (including slaves); the pater enforced matters involving interference with any property. The Commentaries of Gaius (written between 130 and 180 AD) on the Twelve Tables treated furtum (in modern parlance: "theft") as a tort.

Similarly, assault and violent robbery involved trespass as to the pater's property (so, for example, the rape of a slave could become the subject of compensation to the pater as having trespassed on his "property"), and breach of such laws created a vinculum juris (an obligation of law) that only the payment of monetary compensation (modern "damages") could discharge. Similarly, the consolidated Teutonic laws of the Germanic tribes,^[17] included a complex system of monetary compensations for what courts would now^[update] consider the complete^{[citation needed]} range of criminal offences against the person, from murder down.

Even though Rome abandoned its Britannic provinces around 400 AD, the Germanic mercenaries – who had largely become instrumental in enforcing Roman rule in Britannia – acquired ownership of land there and continued to use a mixture of Roman and Teutonic Law, with much written down under the early Anglo-Saxon Kings.^[18] But only when a more centralized English monarchy emerged following the Norman invasion, and when the kings of England attempted to assert power over the land and its peoples, did the modern concept emerge, namely of a crime not only as an offence against the "individual", but also as a wrong against the "State".^[19]

This idea came from common law, and the earliest conception of a criminal act involved events of such major significance that the "State" had to usurp the usual functions of the civil tribunals, and direct a special law or privilegium against the perpetrator. All the earliest English criminal trials involved wholly extraordinary and arbitrary courts without any settled law to apply, whereas the civil (delictual) law operated in a highly developed and consistent manner (except where a King wanted to raise money by selling a new form of writ). The development of the idea that the "State" dispenses justice in a court only emerges in parallel with or after the emergence of the concept of sovereignty.

In continental Europe, Roman law persisted, but with a stronger influence from the Christian Church.^[20] Coupled with the more diffuse political structure based on smaller feudal units, various legal traditions emerged, remaining more strongly rooted in Roman jurisprudence, but modified to meet the prevailing political climate.

In Scandinavia the effect of Roman law did not become apparent until the 17th century, and the courts grew out of the things — the assemblies of the people. The people decided the cases (usually with largest freeholders dominating). This system later gradually developed into a system with a royal judge nominating a number of the most esteemed men of the parish as his board, fulfilling the function of "the people" of yore.

From the Hellenic system onwards, the policy rationale for requiring the payment of monetary compensation for wrongs committed has involved the avoidance of feuding between clans and families.^[21] If compensation could mollify families' feelings, this would help to keep the peace. On the other hand, the institution of oaths also played down the threat of feudal warfare. Both in archaic Greece and in medieval Scandinavia, an accused person walked free if he could get a sufficient number of male relatives to swear him unguilty. (Compare the United Nations Security Council, in which the veto power of the permanent members ensures that the organization does not become involved in crises where it could not enforce its decisions.)

These means of restraining private feuds did not always work, and sometimes prevented the fulfillment of justice. But in the earliest times the "state" did not always provide an independent policing force. Thus criminal law grew out what 21st-century lawyers would call torts; and, in real terms, many acts and omissions classified as crimes actually overlap with civil-law concepts.

The development of sociological thought from the 19th century onwards prompted some fresh views on crime and criminality, and fostered the beginnings of criminology as a study of crime in society. Nietzsche noted a link between crime and creativity – in The Birth of Tragedy he asserted: "The best and brightest that man can acquire he must obtain by crime". In the 20th century Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish made a study of criminalization as a coercive method of state control.

Classification and categorisation[link]

The examples and perspective in this section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (January 2010)

Categorisation by type[link]

The following classes of offences are used, or have been used, as legal terms of art:

• Offence against the person^[22]
• Violent offence^[23]
• Sexual offence^[23]
• Offence against property^[22]

Researchers and commentators have classified crimes into the following categories, in addition to those above:

• Forgery, personation and cheating^[24]
• Firearms and offensive weapons^[25]
• Offences against the State/Offences against the Crown and Government^[26]/Political offences^[27]
• Harmful or dangerous drugs^[28]
• Offences against religion and public worship^[29]
• Offences against public justice^[30]/Offences against the administration of public justice^[27]
• Public order offence^[31]
• Commerce, financial markets and insolvency^[32]
• Offences against public morals and public policy^[33]
• Motor vehicle offences^[34]
• Conspiracy, incitement and attempt to commit crime^[35]
• Inchoate offence
• Juvenile Delinquency

Categorisation by penalty[link]

One can categorise crimes depending on the related punishment, with sentencing tariffs prescribed in line with the perceived seriousness of the offence. Thus fines and noncustodial sentences may address the crimes seen as least serious, with lengthy imprisonment or (in some jurisdictions) capital punishment reserved for the most serious.

Common law[link]

Under the common law of England, crimes were classified as either treason, felony or misdemeanour, with treason sometimes being included with the felonies. This system was based on the perceived seriousness of the offence. It is still used in the United States but the distinction between felony and misdemeanour is abolished in England and Wales and Northern Ireland.

Classification by mode of trial[link]

The following classes of offence are based on mode of trial:

• Indictable-only offence
• Indictable offence
• Hybrid offence, aka either-way offence in England and Wales
• Summary offence, aka infraction in the US

Classification by origin[link]

In common law countries, crimes may be categorised into common law offences and statutory offences. In the US, Australia and Canada (in particular), they are divided into federal crimes and under state crimes.

Other classifications[link]

• Arrestable offence

U.S. classification[link]

In the United States since 1930, the FBI has tabulated Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) annually from crime data submitted by law enforcement agencies across the United States.^[36] Officials compile this data at the city, county, and state levels into the Uniform crime reports (UCR). They classify violations of laws based on common law as Part I (index) crimes in UCR data. These are further categorised as violent or property crimes. Part I violent crimes include murder and criminal homicide (voluntary manslaughter), forcible rape, aggravated assault, and robbery; while Part I property crimes include burglary, arson, larceny/theft, and motor-vehicle theft. All other crimes count come under Part II.

For convenience, such lists usually include infractions although, in the U.S., they may come into the sphere not of the criminal law, but rather of the civil law. Compare tortfeasance.

Booking-arrests require detention for a time-frame ranging 1 to 24 hours.

Causes and correlates of crime[link]

Many different causes and correlates of crime have been proposed with varying degree of empirical support. They include socioeconomic, psychological, biological, and behavioral factors. Controversial topics include media violence research and effects of gun politics.

Crimes in international law[link]

Crimes defined by treaty as crimes against international law include:

• Crimes against peace
• Crimes of apartheid
• Forced disappearance
• Genocide
• Piracy
• Sexual slavery
• Slavery
• Waging a war of aggression
• War crimes

From the point of view of State-centric law, extraordinary procedures (usually international courts) may prosecute such crimes. Note the role of the International Criminal Court at The Hague in the Netherlands.

Popular opinion in the Western World and Former Soviet Union often^[when?] associates international law with the concept of opposing terrorism^{[citation needed]} — seen as a crime as distinct from warfare.

Religion and crime[link]

Religious sentiment often becomes a contributory factor of crime. 1819 anti-Jewish riots in Frankfurt where rioters attacked Jewish businesses and destroyed property

Different religious traditions may promote distinct norms of behaviour, and these in turn may clash or harmonise with the perceived interests of a state. Socially accepted or imposed religious morality has influenced secular jurisdictions on issues that may otherwise concern only an individual's conscience. Activities sometimes criminalized on religious grounds include (for example) alcohol-consumption (prohibition), abortion and stem-cell research. In various historical and present-day societies, institutionalized religions have established systems of earthly justice that punish crimes against the divine will and against specific devotional, organizational and other rules under specific codes, such as Roman Catholic canon law.

Military jurisdictions and states of emergency[link]

In the military sphere, authorities can prosecute both regular crimes and specific acts (such as mutiny or desertion) under martial-law codes that either supplant or extend civil codes in times of (for example) war.

Many constitutions contain provisions to curtail freedoms and criminalize otherwise tolerated behaviors under a state of emergency in the event of war, natural disaster or civil unrest. Undesired activities at such times may include assembly in the streets, violation of curfew, or possession of firearms.

Employee crime[link]

Two common types of employee crime exist: embezzlement and sabotage.^{[citation needed]}

The complexity and anonymity of computer systems may help criminal employees camouflage their operations. The victims of the most costly scams include banks, brokerage houses, insurance companies, and other large financial institutions.^[37]

Most people guilty of embezzlement do not have criminal histories.^{[citation needed]} Embezzlers tend to have a gripe against their employer, have financial problems, or simply an inability to resist the temptation of a loophole they have found.^{[citation needed]} Screening and background checks on perspective employees can help in prevention; however, many laws make some types of screening difficult or even illegal. Fired or disgruntled employees sometimes sabotage their company's computer system as a form of "pay back".^[37] This sabotage may take the form of a logic bomb, a computer virus, or creating general havoc.

Some places of employment have developed measures in an attempt to combat and prevent employee crime. Places of employment sometimes implement security measures such as cameras, fingerprint records of employees, and background checks.^{[citation needed]} Although privacy-advocates have questioned such methods, they appear to serve the interests of the organisations using them. Not only do these methods help prevent employee crime, but they protect the company from punishment and/or lawsuits for negligent hiring.^{[38][verification needed]}

See also[link]

• Causes and correlates of crime
• Law and order (politics)

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Aquinas, Thomas. (1988). On Law, Morality and Politics. 2nd edition. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. ISBN 0-87220-663-7
• Attenborough, F. L. (ed. and trans.) (1922). The Laws of the Earliest English Kings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reprint March 2006. The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 1-58477-583-1
• Blackstone, William. (1765–1769). Commentaries on the Law of England: A Facsimile of the First Edition of 1765-1769, Vol. 1. (1979). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-05538-8
• Blythe, James M. (1992). Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03167-3
• Cohen, Stanley (1985). Visions of Social Control: Crime, Punishment, and Classification. Polity Press. ISBN 0-7456-0021-2
• Daube, David. (1969). Roman Law: Linguistic, Social and Philosophical Aspects. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-85224-051-1
• Driver, G. R. & Mills, John C. (1952–1955). The Babylonian Laws. 2 Vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-825110-6
• Dworkin, Ronald. (2005). Taking Rights Seriously. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-86711-4
• Foucault, Michel (1975). Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, New York: Random House.
• Gagarin, Michael (1989) [1986] Early Greek Law (Reprint ed.) Berkeley: University of California Press ISBN 0-520-06602-2 
• Garner, Richard. (1987). Law and Society in Classical Athens. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-00856-2
• Garoupa, Nuno & Klerman, Daniel. (2002). "Optimal Law Enforcement with a Rent-Seeking Government". American Law and Economics Review Vol. 4, No. 1. pp116–140.
• Guterman, Simeon L. (1990). The Principle of the Personality of Law in the Germanic Kingdoms of Western Europe from the Fifth to the Eleventh Century. New York: P. Lang. ISBN 0-8204-0731-3
• Hart, H.L.A. (1961). The Concept of Law. 2nd revised edition (1997). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-876123-6
• Hart, H.L.A. (1972). Law, Liberty and Morality. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-0154-7
• Kern, Fritz. (1948). Kingship and Law in the Middle Ages. Reprint edition (1985), Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.
• Kramer, Samuel Noah. (1971). The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character. Chicago: University of Chicago. ISBN 0-226-45238-7
• Maine, Henry Sumner. (1861). Ancient Law: Its Connection with the Early History of Society, and Its Relation to Modern Ideas. Reprint edition (1986). Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ISBN 0-8165-1006-7
• Oppenheim, A. Leo (and Reiner, Erica as editor). (1964). Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization. Revised edition (September 15, 1977). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-63187-7
• Pennington, Kenneth. (1993). The Prince and the Law, 1200–1600: Sovereignty and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07995-7
• Polinsky, A. Mitchell. (1980). "Private versus Public Enforcement of Fines". The Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. IX, No. 1, (January), pp105–127.
• Polinsky, A. Mitchell & Shavell, Steven. (1997). On the Disutility and Discounting of Imprisonment and the Theory of Deterrence, NBER Working Papers 6259, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
• Skaist, Aaron Jacob. (1994). The Old Babylonian Loan Contract: Its History and Geography. Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan University Press. ISBN 965-226-161-0
• Théry, Julien. (2011). "Atrocitas/enormitas. Esquisse pour une histoire de la catégorie de 'crime énorme' du Moyen Âge à l'époque moderne", Clio@Themis, Revue électronique d'histoire du droit, n. 4
• Tierney, Brian. (1979). Church Law and Constitutional Thought in the Middle Ages. London: Variorum Reprints. ISBN 0-86078-036-8
• Tierney, Brian (1988) [1964]. The Crisis of Church and State, 1050–1300: with selected documents (Reprint ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-6701-8. 
• Vinogradoff, Paul. (1909). Roman Law in Medieval Europe. Reprint edition (2004). Kessinger Publishing Co. ISBN 1-4179-4909-0

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Crime

Look up crime in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• www.crime-statistics.co.uk UK Crime Statistics and Comparissons
• Free Criminal Records Search - US Criminal Records and Sex Offender Records
• lacuevadelcrimen.com Crime Link
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A bounty hunter captures fugitives for a monetary reward (bounty). Other names, mainly used in the United States, include bail enforcement agent and fugitive recovery agent.

Laws in the U.S.[link]

In the United States legal system, the 1873 U.S. Supreme Court case Taylor v. Taintor, 16 Wall (83 U.S. 366, 21 L.Ed. 287), is cited as having established that the person into whose custody an accused is remanded as part of the accuser's bail has sweeping rights to that person (although this may have been accurate at the time the decision was reached, the portion cited was obiter dictum and has no binding precedential value). Most bounty hunters are employed by bail bondsmen: the bounty hunter is paid about 10% of the bail the fugitive initially paid. If the fugitive eludes bail, the bondsman, not the bounty hunter, is responsible for the remainder of the fugitive's bail. This is a way of ensuring his clients arrive at trial. In the United States, bounty hunters claim to catch 31,500 bail jumpers per year, about 90% of people who jump bail.^[1]

Bounty hunters are sometimes called "skiptracers", but this usage can be misleading. While bounty hunters are often skiptracers as well, skiptracing generally refers to the process of searching for an individual through less direct methods than active pursuit and apprehension, such as spies or debt collectors. It is a civil matter and does not always imply criminal conduct on the part of the individual being traced.

In the United States of America, bounty hunters have varying levels of authority in their duties with regard to their targets depending on which states they operate in. As opined in Taylor v. Taintor, and barring restrictions applicable state by state, a bounty hunter can enter the fugitive's private property without a warrant in order to execute a re-arrest. They cannot, however, enter the property of anyone other than the fugitive without a warrant or the owner's permission.

In some states, bounty hunters do not undergo any formal training, and are generally unlicensed, only requiring sanction from a bail bondsman to operate. In other states, however, they are held to varying standards of training and license. State legal requirements are often imposed on out-of-state bounty hunters, meaning a suspect could temporarily escape rearrest by entering a state in which the bail agent has limited or no jurisdiction.

Connecticut[link]

The State of Connecticut has a detailed licensing process which requires any person who wants to engage in the business as a bail enforcement agent (bounty hunter) must first obtain a professional license from the Commissioner of Public Safety; specifically detailing that "No person shall, as surety on a bond in a criminal proceeding or as an agent of such surety, engage in the business of taking or attempting to take into custody the principal on the bond who has failed to appear in court and for whom a re-arrest warrant or capias has been issued unless such person is licensed as a bail enforcement agent". Connecticut has strict standards which require Bail Enforcement Agents to pass an extensive background check and, while engaging in fugitive recovery operations, be uniformed, notify the local police barrack, wear a badge, and only carry licensed and approved firearms, including handguns and long guns which are permitted. Recently Connecticut State Police converted their Bail Enforcement Agent licensing unit to reflect the important role Bail Enforcement Agents play in the Connecticut criminal justice system; placing them in the newly defined Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.^[2]

Several schools in Connecticut have obtained certification by the Connecticut State Police to pre-license Bail Enforcement Agents in a minimum of 20 hours of Criminal Justice training and a minimum of eight hours of firearms training. Some of the more advanced schools offer specialized training in the area of tactical firearms to prepare BEA's for conducting dangerous recovery operations.^[3]

Kentucky[link]

Kentucky prohibits bounty hunting in any form. Only a peace officer may make an arrest on a warrant that is issued in NCIC.^[4] This is because the state does not have a system of bail bondsmen.

Louisiana[link]

Louisiana requires bounty hunters to wear clothing identifying them as such.^[4]

Texas[link]

A Texas bounty hunter is required to be a peace officer, Level III (armed) security officer, or a private investigator.^{[citation needed]}

Florida[link]

In Florida you must obtain a "limited surety agent" license from the Florida Department of Financial Services, Bureau of Agent and Agency Licensing, in order to legally apprehend bail fugitives.

International laws and legal protection[link]

Bounty hunters will run into serious legal problems if they try to get fugitives from other countries. Laws in nearly all countries outside the U.S. will judge the re-arrest of any fugitive by private persons as kidnapping, or the bail agent may incur the punishments of some other serious crime if local and international laws are broken by them.^{[clarification needed]} While the United States government generally allows the activities of bounty hunters in the United States, the government in other sovereign nations is not as tolerant of these activities when they are legally a felony.^[5]

Noted bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman (star of the TV series Dog the Bounty Hunter) was arrested in Mexico after he apprehended the multi-millionaire rapist and fugitive Andrew Luster. Chapman was subsequently released and returned to the U.S.^[1] Chapman himself was later declared a fugitive by a Mexican prosecutor and was subsequently arrested in the United States to be extradited back to Mexico. Chapman maintains that under Mexico's citizen arrest law, he and his crew acted under proper policy.

Daniel Kear of Fairfax, Virginia pursued and apprehended Sidney Jaffe at a residence in Canada and returned him to Florida to face trial. Kear was extradited to Canada in 1983, and convicted of kidnapping.^[5]

Several bounty hunters have also been arrested for killing the fugitive or apprehending the wrong individuals, mistaking innocent people for fugitives.^[6]

Unlike police officers, they have no legal protections against injuries to non-fugitives and few legal protections against injuries to their targets.

In a Texas case, bounty hunters Richard James and his partner DG Pearson were arrested in 2001 for felony charges during an arrest. The charges were levied by the fugitive and his family, but were later dismissed against the hunters after the fugitive's wife shot a deputy sheriff in another arrest attempt of the fugitive by the county sheriff's department. The hunters sued the fugitive and family, winning the civil suit for malicious prosecution with a judgment amount of $1.5 million.^{[citation needed]}

Bounty hunting in Rhodesia[link]

During the Rhodesian Bush War, cattle rustling reached epidemic proportions in the late 1970s. This was part of a twofold strategy of the guerrillas against the white minority government in Salisbury. First, it led to starvation in the Tribal Trust Lands; second, it negatively affected the economy of Rhodesia. Since the Army and the British South Africa Police were overstretched on three fronts, soon mercenaries were hired to confront the rustlers. They were called Range Detectives, and most of them were Vietnam veterans, some of them members of The Crippled Eagles. Payment was roughly 7 Rhodesian dollars a day, and a 750 Rhodesian dollar bonus for each rustler caught.^[7]

In fiction[link]

Bounty hunting has been adopted by several action-oriented vehicles, including Westerns, science fiction, fantasy and stories set in modern times. Typically, hunters are depicted as assisting law enforcement agencies in the apprehension of wanted criminals, but also as mercenaries who give their services to powerful criminal figures rather than the proper authorities. Such characters have appeared in books, TV series, movies, comics and games from around the world. These include characters like Rick Deckard from Blade Runner; Boba Fett from the "Star Wars" movies; Reno Raines in the TV series Renegade; Rally Vincent of the manga Gunsmith Cats; Jubal Early from the Firefly franchise; Samus Aran from the Metroid video game series; and several characters in Cowboy Bebop.

• In Westerns, bounty hunters are commonly depicted as loners, cynical yet romantic. The first depiction of the occupation in film was André de Toth's The Bounty Hunter^{[citation needed]} in 1954 starring Randolph Scott.

• Steve McQueen played bounty hunter Josh Randall in the television series Wanted: Dead or Alive for three seasons, making him a star.^[8] The series was followed many years later by a film sequel — Wanted: Dead or Alive (1987) — in which Rutger Hauer played Nick Randall, Josh Randall's grandson. McQueen's final film was The Hunter, a biography of modern day bounty hunter Ralph "Papa" Thorsen.

• The Sergio Leone film For a Few Dollars More starred Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef as bounty hunters chasing the same criminal, but with different motivations for pursuing their target.

• In the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), the character Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter who is tasked with "retiring" escaped androids. In the film adaptation, which was retitled Blade Runner (1982), the bounty hunters are called blade runners.

• Chasseur de primes (French for "bounty hunter") is a Belgian comics adventure in the popular Lucky Luke series which is set in the Old West. It was published in book form in 1972. In this story, bounty hunters are presented as being shunned and despised by society since their motivation to capture outlaws is based more on greed than an actual love for justice. An example is when a bounty hunter orders a drink at the saloon and the barman contemptuously pours it out on the bar rather than in a glass. The book has been published in English.

• Bounty hunting is depicted as a common trade in the Star Wars franchise, with such characters as Jango and Boba Fett, Greedo, IG-88, Zam Wesell and Cad Bane. Another is Valance the Hunter, a cyborg, who played an important role in the early Marvel Comics adaptations of the series in the late 1970s, confronting, and almost defeating, both Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. "Bounty Hunter" is also one of four playable classes for the Imperials's faction in BioWare's MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic.

• Strontium Dog is a British science fiction comic series set in the future in which physically deformed mutated humans work as bounty hunters for the Search/Destroy Agency, which answers to the galactic police force.

• In the television series The Fall Guy, Lee Majors played a Hollywood stunt man who takes bounty hunting assignments on the side (which is the focus of each episode).